Rest in Peace, Yasser Arafat

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Rest in Peace, Yasser Arafat

At the beginning of this story of poison and suspicion, in the summer of 2012, the body of Yasser Arafat had been resting peacefully in its tomb in the West Bank city of Ramallah for eight years.

In what I'll call the middle, about a year ago, his body was exhumed so that it could be tested for evidence of the element polonium-210, a radioactive poison made famous when Russian agents used it to kill an outspoken dissident in 2006.

The Arafat polonium inquiry was sparked by the Qatar-based news service, Al Jazeera, which arranged with the Swiss Institute for Radiation Physics in Lausanne to test his personal effects (bedclothes, pajamas) for poisons. The laboratory reported trace evidence of Po-210, a surprising finding given that he'd been dead for eight years and the element itself has a half-life of only 138.4 days. In fact, some concern was raised that there was there was no clear chain of evidence regarding the artifacts tested. Still the findings caused enough of an uproar that Arafat's body was dug up and some 60 tissue and bone samples were sent to the same Swiss laboratory, to a Russian research facility, and to a French forensics lab.

And this week, we've apparently reached the tale's less than perfect end.

One month ago, the Swiss laboratory announced "moderate support" for the poisoning idea. Then the Russians declared that their tests were inconclusive. Today, the French scientists declared that they saw no signs of poisoning, that when Arafat died at age 75, he was just an ailing elderly man vulnerable to spreading infection.

In fact, this isn't as much of a mixed message as you might think.

Before the French published their findings, the Swiss lab's results had been called into question by a number of scientists, including the Belgium-based medical investigative reporter, Dr. Rudi Roth. You can find Roth's inquiry here at his publication, *Joods Actuel *and translated here. As the translation reveals, Roth asked the head of the Swiss research group why their report lacked the standard margin of error calculations for polonium and was told that the lab had not based the numbers on "any specific evidence" but on their belief that the consistency of polonium levels in the samples was best explained by the supposition of poison. Unlike the French they also discountedthe fact that the grave was contaminated with naturally occurring radon, which includes polonium in its decay chain. The inclination to see poisoning in these results also led Nicholas Priest, the former head of biomedical research at Britain's Atomic Energy Authority, to dispute the findings and suggest that the laboratory was too closely allied with Al Jazeera.

I admire much of Al Jazeera's reporting and there's no doubt that they do a more through and often meticulously job than American networks in covering many global issues. But the network has also been seen as having a political agenda in the Middle East which is unfriendly to Israel. And this story, with its political-assassin undertones, this "Killing Arafat"murder investigation, has been curiously oversold as conclusive. Even the Swiss laboratory's most cautious work, such as an essay calling for better forensic techniques in such investigations, was reportedby the network as evidence.

Of course, to be fair, there's no doubt that Israel ( like many other countries ) is capable of political assassination and that it's always worth raising such questions. And to be fair, no good journalist likes an investigation that fizzles into uncertainty, into an ending that I described last month as a "maybe-murder." But rather than proof of murder, this investigation has mostly yielded proof of suspicion, and of the anger, the hostilities, the hatreds that simmer around Israel and the Palestinians. Even today, both Arafat's widow and Palestinian officials are insisting that regardless of what science tells us, they believe that murder was done nine years ago. "Some people will not look at the evidence and will keep on stirring this," an Israeli spokesman rather bitterly told The Guardian. "Like all successful soap operas, it will not end as long as there is public demand for more."

It's statements like that which make me positive that Arafat himself would have enjoyed his role as star of this production. I think he would definitely appreciated the speculation about Israel's assassination policies. As a certified chemistry geek, on the other hand, I've mostly enjoyed following this issue as an explorationof a fascinatingly complex radioactive element and what science can - and cannot - tell us about how it works and who it kills.

But I've found myself thinking also about the poisonous nature of suspicion. About Yasser Arafat's body removed from a quiet resting place as part of this endless and possibly unanswerable inquiry into murder-or-no. I wonder what we've accomplished by stirring up old angers and digging up the dead. And I find myself hoping - or most likely just dreaming - for resolution rather than mystery, for a chance to allow Yasser Arafat to rest in peace. At least for another eight years.